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Live Review: Straight Lines at The Barfly, Camden

Monday was cold and drizzly, I’d had a hectic and stressful day and more than anything in the world wanted to crawl home and hide in my bed. Instead, I picked myself up, dusted myself down and headed into Camden for a catch up with one of my best friends and a dance at The Barfly.

It’s been some time since I last stepped foot in The Barfly in Camden and my memories of the night are somewhat hazy to say the least. That night I was there to see a different gaggle of Welsh noisemakers but on Monday I returned to see Straight Lines show London that Welsh boys do it better.

Now, once upon a time I was the editor of a music website called Glasswerk, before I upped sticks and moved to the big smoke. On, what I think was my very first day on the job; I interviewed these four lovely boys in a manky basement in Manchester and for this reason they will always hold a pretty warm place in my heart. Despite this, it has actually been a fair old amount of time since I last saw them play live, probably 18 months or so, and I had kind of forgotten how bloody good they are.

Bloody good might just be an understatement actually but it’s not like I’m prone to exaggeration or anything! Anyway, they rattled through their set like a bunch of pros and singer, Tom Jenkins, held the crowd in the palm of his hand with his amusing and honest between song chat. He also threw in the fact that he had run the Cardiff half marathon the day before, after 18 tour dates, actually finishing the thing would be impressive enough but doing it in 1 hour and 23 minutes coming, in the top 150 or so runners is to be applauded and he wasn’t going to let this fact slide! The set was a good mix of songs from both their albums and when the acoustic guitars came out for Runaway Now we were reminded this was actually an original and not a Bryan Adams cover as someone had thought at their Manchester date.

The Barfly isn’t a big venue but it has a brilliant atmosphere, one that was amplified tenfold by Straight Lines. Not one person there wasn’t nodding their head or tapping their feet. They certainly proved these boys from the valleys can show us city dwellers an exceptionally good time.

Are you a Straight Lines fan? How do you feel about Welsh boys? Been to any good gigs recently?